Maria Fernanda Cardoso | Maratus: Spiders of Paradise

María Fernanda Cardoso is a Colombian-Australian artist who is internationally renowned for using organic materials and both conventional and unconventional tools such as sculpture, photography, installation, video, and performance to address the connections and tensions between society and the natural world.

Maratus: Spiders of Paradise presents Cardoso’s ongoing photographic project about the minuscule, albeit captivating Australian Maratus spider. Engaging the terrain between science, art, and nature creatively, this exhibition celebrates the wonderful beauty of the natural world and reveals the astonishing lives of creatures that often go unnoticed. About this tiny arachnid, Cardoso says, "The Maratus spiders of Australia are the most colorful, flamboyant, sexy, and charming spiders on the planet. To me, their use of color, gesture, sound and movement makes them sophisticated visual and performing artists. They are also the smallest performers I know of, on average about 3-5mm in size, smaller than a grain of rice."

The exhibition features large and small-scale digital photographic portraits of several species of Maratus, displaying their unique and brightly colored abdomens that are part of their elaborate mating rituals. Cardoso worked with renowned scientific imager Geoff Thompson and entomologist Andy Wang from the Queensland Museum, who specialize in deep focus microphotography and microscopic specimen preparation, to create these large-scale photographs. Each photographic image is comprised of over 1000 individual photos, which together reveal the spiders’ nuanced color and form in stunning detail.